Mystery Girl

The moment the song changes.

Candles drip wax onto the tables, and the song changes. A slow rain makes the outdoors seem endless and ancient. Sandalwood sits low under the room. White flowers catch the light off the small flames, magnolia petals and violet keep that light soft, and almond heliotrope turns it faintly sweet.

A dark drink comes across the room with a bright berry settled at the bottom of it. Orris powder holds the whole room at a distance, the way cold air holds a doorway. Ylang-ylang comes up against warm pimento at the rim of the glass. The pistons churn, loud knocking at the garden gate, an opalescent flash from an animal's eye, a grip around the throat. Tobacco leaf and frankincense smoke settle over the rest.

Sister is the work of Jenny Mulder and Melina Cortez, and it begins with the world of Roy Orbison. Mulder carves the bottles by hand and they are cast in pewter, fifteen of each. Cortez made the fragrances. Three of them, released at once. Italian glass figures and handmade glass lamp panels sit alongside them, each one an edition of one.

A hillside at the end of the world with the sun going down into the Pacific. A small town under a sky domed like a cathedral, radio on and windows down. A crowded room at the moment the song changes and something shifts. Mulder writes as well, and works in ceramics: Traveling Through Light is an essay about driving, and about the way light sits differently in a Tucson desert and a Tuscan afternoon.